Do you need images to get your message across?

While HTML gives you the ability to design a graphic-rich email, it is important to remember the purpose of your communication and how your recipients are going to receive it.

Email is still, fundamentally, a communication tool, not a broadcast advertising tool. The latter is what spammers use it for. So to ensure you don’t look like a spammer, it’s important to understand your audience, your message and how your recipients will receive your message.

While flashy, colourful images will catch the eye, many of your recipients won’t even see these images when they first open your email. If your email is made up entirely of cool graphics, this is what many of your recipients will see:

Not quite the impact you were looking for?

Unless your recipients have added you to their safe sender’s list, this is the first impression your email will make as most email clients disable images by default. And, if they are viewing your email on their mobile, the experience will be even worse.

Including ALT text with your images (text that appears in place of an image that is turned off) will help to a degree, but as you can see from the example here, you can’t rely on this. Outlook 2007, for example, places a two-sentence paragraph in place of the image, which will appear before any ALT text you might have provided. So in many cases, your ALT text would never be seen.

Ironically, the most important thing to consider when designing your email is what it will look like without the images. Therefore, you want to ensure there is a good balance of text with your images, particularly at the top of your email where your recipients look first. They should be able to identify your brand and what the email is about from what they see in the preview pane and before they download images (if they do so at all).

In the example to the right, the important content is at the top and the recipient can quickly get the information they need without ever having to download the images.

Remember, you only have a few precious seconds of your recipient’s attention. Make sure they get the message immediately so you can engage them and get them to take action.

To summarise:

• Images should enhance, not dominate your message
• Use ALT text for all important images
• Ensure you put important text at the top of your email to get your message across

You can read more about email design best practice here.

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